Classic Album Review

A sadly and surprisingly often overlooked band from Holland, PICTURE released several good hard rock albums in the late 1970's and two stellar metal albums in the early 80's. Diamond Dreamer is the third PICTURE album (ahead of S/T and "Heavy Metal Ears"). On the first two PICTURE albums, you hear a strong 1970's hard rock influence and style fronted by vocalist Ronald Van Prooijen. Unless you are interested in the roots and history of this band, avoid these two albums. In advance of recording "Diamond Dreamer" they changed vocalists to Shmoulik Avigal and the sound of the band get MUCH heavier. This is partly due to the new vocalist, but also due to a new producer, Pete Hinton who had previous success and experience with bands such as SAXON.

From the beginning of the album, you can hear the heavier and darker sound on Diamond Dreamer. In particular, the riffs are more metal and the vocals are far more potent. The only real throw back track to the previous albums is "You're Touching Me" where a 70's hard rock sound is front & center. But the remainder of the album is more than solid. There are some awesome metal tracks here that in 1982 were innovative head-bangers such as: "Night Hunter", "Message from Hell", "The Hangman", and the excellent "Lousy Lady"!

This album at its time was one of the heaviest things out there. It was the start of the NWOBHM surge. But PICTURE had a style that was a getting a bit darker and potent that many of the other bands back then. This characteristic would continue to be more pronounced in the next album, "Eternal Dark". And while that album is their masterpiece, "Diamond Dreamer" is well worth having as an important and overlooked part of metal history, with no significant weaknesses.